Personal computers and other computing devices usually play sounds with adequate sound quality but do a poor job at recording audio. With today's processing power, storage capacities, broadband connections, and speech recognition engines of the computing world, there is an opportunity for computing devices to use sounds to deliver more value to users. Computer systems can provide better live communication, voice recording, and user interfaces than phones.
However, most computing devices continue to use the traditional recording paradigm of a single microphone. A single microphone, however, does not accurately record audio because the microphone tends to pick up too much ambient noise and adds too much electronic noise. Generally speaking, single microphone based noise reduction algorithms are only effective for stationary environment noise suppression. They are not suitable for non-stationary noise reduction, such as background talking in a busy street, subway station, or cocktail party. Thus, users who desire better recording quality commonly resort to expensive tethered headsets.